When you think of Orioles shortstops who comes to mind? Probably Cal Ripken, Jr.? Miguel Tejada? If you're older, Luis Aparicio? I grew up in the pre-internet, pre-ESPN, pre-cable era. Living in Chicago I saw a lot of Cubs games on TV and if I was bored enough, some White Sox games. Other than that the games we saw were NBC's Game of the Week and the World Series. So the teams I got to know were the best of the time. When I started collecting again I made a point of accumulating the autographs of players from those teams. The Baltimore Orioles were one of them. I'm certainly not a super collector but I probably have autographed cards of between 15-20 of late sixties early seventies O's players. Most of them are of the certified variety and over the years I've show a bunch of them.
That was a long digression, the point of which was to explain why when I think of Orioles shortstops it's Mark Belanger. Also as a Cubs fan, if Brooks Robinson was the Orioles Ron Santo, then Belanger was the their Don Kessinger. In fact, both were exactly 6'1"-170. You could look it up.
Belanger died of lung cancer in 1998 at the age of 54 before the certified auto era so when looking to add a card to my collection a slabbed example was the way to go. Looking back I may have overpaid for the one I got. On the other hand in addition to being signed it is an O-Pee-Chee. Anyways, that's a lot of words to introduce one card and certainly a lot more words than you usually get from me. Here's Mark!
Really interesting and unique card, I like it!
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of Orioles shortstops I think of Ripken first, then Belanger.
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